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JACKSON, ANDREW.   Term Paper ID:18285 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Jacksonian Democracy, movement of laissez-faire.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Jacksonian Democracy, movement of laissez-faire. Paper Introduction: President Andrew Jackson may be called the first Democrat, the first President to run and be elected on the ticket of the Democratic Party--now the oldest continually operating political party in the world. (This credit might alternatively be given to Thomas Jefferson, since the political grouping he represented-ironically called Republican--was the direct ancestor of the later Democratic Party. But the party continuity from Jefferson to Jackson is much weaker than the subsequent continuity of the Democratic Party from Jackson's day to our own.) In a broader sense, he may be called the first democrat: the first political leader, perhaps, since ancient Athens to stand for direct majoritarian democracy rather than a "mixed" republic in which democratic elements were intermixed with oligarchic elements. Modern times have not been sympathetic to Jackson. His Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Educated people of that time,steeped in classical learning, were perfectly well aware that democraticPericlean Athens was to be credited with the most brilliant single chapterin the history of Western Civilization. To virtually all shades of opinion in the 182 s, black Americanssimply were not part of "the people," whose rights a democratic order oughtto defend. Today, no politician who wished to continuehis career in office would say such things in public. His democraticvalues are now taken for granted in American politics, so that how new andradical they were in his own day is forgotten. Only members of the House ofRepresentatives were directly elected by the people. How, then, are we tointerpret Jackson? These people looked onnational economic policy and controls, as embodied in the Second Bank, notas a "countervailing" force against business interests, but a mediumthrough which those interests could be coordinated and supported. How could he stand for rule of the people, yet endorsesubjecting black Americans to fetters and bullwhips and driving nativeAmericans off their ancestral lands? The"better" elements of society might be horrified by the election of AndrewJackson, but he won in spite of them, and carried to the White House avigorously democratic ideology. The Court came to beassociated with the protection of minorities against discrimination, and ofindividual rights against police-power intrusions. Indian Removal could then bepresented, with some credibility, as a way of protecting the "Indian way oflife" against the influence of intermixture with white society. What did "Jacksonian democracy" mean in his own day?What relationship did his laissez-faire economic policies have to thetraditional role of Democrats as champions of the working man againstvested interests? Contrariwise, the Jacksonians looked at the Second Bank, andcentralized government economic policy in general, not as a defense againstthe economically powerful, but as a means by which they would harness thepowers of government in their own interests--a means of shutting offcompetition, not a protection against monopoly or oligopoly. We todayassociate laissez-faire economics with conservative Republicanism, and thuswith vested business interests. If onethinks of the often incestuous relationship between present day localbusiness interests and zoning boards, economic-development commissions, andthe like, one can grasp something of how wealthy merchants of the 182 slooked at the First Bank. Here of course is where Jackson's valuesdiffer most widely from our own. More broadly, Jacksonian Democratswere suspicious of the Court as a conservative and unresponsive element inthe political system. Not only was the original theory of the Constitution thus far lessdemocratic than we think of it as today, but the well-to-do and better-educated segment of the population had no hesitation in publicly callingdemocracy mob rule, and in insisting on a privileged standing for thewealthy and allegedly wise. Our perceptions of the Supreme Court in modern timeshave been biased by the liberal Earl Warren Court of the 195 s and 196 s,which persisted effectively into the 198 s. Nor were Indians. President Andrew Jackson may be called the first Democrat, the firstPresident to run and be elected on the ticket of the Democratic Party--nowthe oldest continually operating political party in the world. In the pages of the greatestclassical historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, they could read criticalbut sympathetic analyses of Athenian democracy in action. The wealthy conservatives who opposed Jacksonian democracy were thespiritual ancestors not of the Fortune 5 , but of the local well-to-do:real estate developers, merchants, local bankers. Even Abolitionistswere seldom champions of black equality or "civil rights" in the modernsense. Modern times have not been sympathetic to Jackson. Moreover, it was not clear to people at thattime that the Oklahoma Territory, or the Western plains in general, wouldever be of much interest to white settlers. once in office, Jackson faced the specific question of the future ofthe Second Bank of the United States, and behind it the more generalquestion of the role of the Supreme Court as arbiter of public affairs. His economic policies, rooted in laissez-faire and encapsulated inhis struggle against the Second Bank of the United States, are to us inpart obscure (who today cares one way or another about the Second Bank?)and in part contradictory. The immediate cause of Jacksonian hostility to the Supreme Court wasits ruling in favor of the Second Bank. The franchise under stateconstitutions was steadily enlarged, and popular election of PresidentialElectors became the established rule, with the functions of the ElectoralCollege quickly reduced to its present limited and confusing role. The answer lies in the changing economic structure of the country.Jacksonian America was a world without large corporations as we know themtoday; that is, without large or widespread concentrations of economicpower. Under Chief Justice John Marshall, theSupreme Court -the least democratic of the three branches, made up as itwas of lifetime appointees--established itself as gatekeeper of theConstitution. In the 182 s, Whigpoliticians had no hesitation in saying them. Today we associate laissez-faire economics withthe tradition and heritage of conservative Republicanism, of Coolidge andReagan, not the Democratic tradition of Roosevelt and Kennedy. As the conservative-dominated Rehnquist Court comes intoits own at the end of the 198 s and beginning of the 199 s, liberals andDemocrats are beginning to get a taste of the more usual role of theSupreme Court in American public life. But the party continuityfrom Jefferson to Jackson is much weaker than the subsequent continuity ofthe Democratic Party from Jackson's day to our own.) In a broader sense,he may be called the first democrat: the first political leader, perhaps,since ancient Athens to stand for direct majoritarian democracy rather thana "mixed" republic in which democratic elements were intermixed witholigarchic elements. onthese questions, Jackson placed himself solidly on the side of theinterests of the ordinary working man, as those interests were thenperceived, and thus against the spirit of economic centralism andregulation embodied by the Bank, and against the powers of the SupremeCourt. Election ofPresidents was thoroughly indirect, proceeding from state governmentsthrough the Electoral College--an institution which today remains as aconfusing and useless "vermiform appendix of the Constitution," and whichin fact never functioned as intended, but which the Framers themselves (asthe name makes clear) envisioned as somewhat analogous to the College ofCardinals which elects Popes. Yet the Revolution had let the cat of popular rule out of the bag,and it could not be gotten in again. To understand these positions, we must perhaps distinguish betweenfundamental political principles and political tactics. The place to begin is with the meaning of democracy, as it wasunderstood in the early nineteenth century. Democracy, to the thinkers of early American times,had strong connotations of "mob rule." Thus, while the theory of the American Constitution was rooted in adoctrine of consent of the people as the basis of just government, theConstitution in its original form largely screened the people themselvesfrom direct participation in government. (Thiscredit might alternatively be given to Thomas Jefferson, since thepolitical grouping he represented-ironically called Republican--was thedirect ancestor of the later Democratic Party. But the Warren Courtwas very much an exception in American history; the Supreme Court hasgenerally been a conservative power (think of Dred Scott, the upholding ofschool segregation in the early 19 s, or the striking-down of many NewDeal programs. His famous Inauguralcelebration is usually seen through the eyes of horrified Northeastern blue-blood contemporaries, and thus presented not as a celebration of thepeople's rule but as a redneck party. Above all,Jackson's support of slavery and his championing of Indian removal alignhim with the darkest chapters of the American past. In another important respect, decisions of the Warren-era Court whichwere anti-majoritarian were often hailed by liberals as triumphs ofpersonal liberty--most particularly, when the Court struck down state lawsregarding racial discrimination. Yet it happensthat the mainstream of Western political philosophy, coming down from Platoand Aristotle, was created by Athens' resentful oligarchic opposition. In the 198 s, the Reagan Administrationchampioned laissez-faire and "deregulation," while liberal Democrats calledfor tighter regulation and "industrial policy. Thefailures of Athenian democracy were more brightly colored in their workthan its successes. Altogether, it seems too easy to paint Old Hickory as a Southernpopulist-racist, the spiritual ancestor of Theodore Bilbo and GeorgeWallace--not someone who present-day Democrats (or, for that matter, manypresent-day Republicans) would be eager to claim. Why the seeming turnaround? Let us considerfirst the question of economic regulation and the Second Bank. In short, contrary though Jackson's specific economic and judiciarypolicy stands may seem strange to modern-day liberals, their overall intentfits solidly into the Democratic political and ideological tradition.While Jackson may seem desperately behind our times in matters of racialequality, in his broader principles he was far ahead of his own time.----------------------- 7 While modern liberals sometimes fear the"tyranny of the majority" in matters of individual freedom ranging fromabortion to obscenity to flag-burning, the heart of the modern liberalconcern for "tyranny of the majority" is clearly the civil-rights issue.To Jackson, it simply did not exist. Nor did it exist to many of his contemporaries. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.